Dr Katherine Firth is a Lecturer at La Trobe University. Her PhD was on collaboration in writing.

Her recent book How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble was co-authored with Inger Mewburn and Shaun Lehmann. She has collaborated on academic books and journal articles, and is currently working on three book projects with three different teams.

Co-authoring can be very different for researchers from different disciplines.

In the social sciences and the sciences, for example, co-authored articles have become the norm over the last few decades. My academic background is in English Literature, where we do not usually write collaboratively (Leane, Fletcher and Garg, 2019, Nyhan and Duke-Williams, 2014). Publishing a collaborative article or book can still be a career limiting move in the Humanities where single authorship is the norm.

As an early career researcher, I tried to keep publishing in the traditional ways, what is sometimes called ‘lone wolf’ scholarship (as in this previous Research Whisperer post ). It is pretty tough and solitary out there. You travel to the library or archives on your own, you read alone, you write alone, you edit alone. You might eventually get to work with a Research Assistant, but their intellectual contribution to the work is typically small: transcribing, fixing references, fact checking, copy editing (in other words, work that doesn’t merit co-authorship). You might go to conferences and present a paper on your work to build an audience and get feedback, but there’s a still a gap between what you present at a conference, and whether anyone actually wants to publish the finished article. Often, the only feedback you get is from peer reviewers. Read more of this post

Máté Pálfy is the Community Manager for preLights, a preprint highlighting service that was launched a year ago by the not-for-profit publisher The Company of Biologists.

Before taking up this role, Máté did his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, studying gene regulation using zebrafish embryos. He is a big supporter of open science and is excited to see how preprints will shape the future of publishing. Máté tweets from @mate_palfy and you can follow preLights @preLights.

The Research Whisperer was very interested to hear more about preLights because we’re always up for different ways of sharing research, and this model appears to benefit the researchers, our scholarly communities, and the research itself. That’s winning all around!

While preLights is focused on the biological sciences, the potential for its format extends much further than this area.

preLights 1st birthday cake! Photo from Máté Pálfy.

When I was a PhD student, one of my favourite things to do was to discuss the latest experiments and results related to my research, and exchange views on where the field was heading.

I particularly enjoyed poster sessions at conferences, where early career researchers can easily engage with more established scientists and discuss unpublished, ‘raw’ science.

In many aspects, preprints (non-reviewed versions of manuscripts deposited on a public server) can be viewed as similar to unpublished research presented at conferences and other meetings. They facilitate collaboration and open discussions about the work, but are much more transparent than conference talks or posters, as the details of the work are better documented. Given these advantages (along with a number of others, discussed here), you might think that researchers would’ve already made the public discussion of preprints part of their routine. Unfortunately, this hasn’t really been the case. Read more of this post

“We would like to wholeheartedly invite you to give the introductory keynote speech at our conference,” said the message on Research Gate.

“Oh yeah,” I thought, “Another scam conference invitation!”

But one that was not scheduled for Las Vegas or Bangkok. Working from the cautious maxim that I should not be so cynical, I decided to do some investigating, just in case. A one-hour Skype call with the Conference Chair convinced me that she and the conference were both real.

This was not a case of too good to be true. Very quickly, I had gone from cynicism, to shock, to pride, to excitement at being invited.

One year on from this invite, with said keynote done in July 2018, I am in a better space to be able to reflect on this. I learned a few things, and am sharing them here! Read more of this post

Dr Barbara Lemon is a member of the FREYA project team at the British Library.

She is an accidental aficionado of libraries, beginning her career as a historian, researcher and tutor in Australian History at the University of Melbourne. She has since worked in the government, tertiary, business and non-profit sectors.

After completing a Creative Fellowship at State Library Victoria, Barbara began working in strategy and project management for national and state libraries in Australia and New Zealand. Her ORCID is 0000-0001-6842-0122.

She is passionate about making our heritage and research resources linked and discoverable. The Twitter account for FREYA is @freya_eu.

If you’re a researcher in any field, chances are you want people to find, read and use your stuff, right?

You probably want them to continue finding it, using it and correctly attributing it to you, whether it’s twenty days or twenty years after publication. In our current state of digital deluge, we’re pretty good on the twenty days. It’s the twenty years where we come unstuck.

Photo by Mathyas Kurmann | unsplash.com

Enter the persistent identifier, or PID. Slayer of the Error 404 message!

A PID is a long-lasting, unambiguous reference to a digital object. That object could be a journal article, dataset, scientific sample, artwork, PhD thesis, publication or person, you name it.

The PID essentially takes you to a record containing metadata about that object or person including, where applicable, its current location for access or download.

The great thing about PIDs is that they stay put. If the location of an object changes, the metadata behind its PID record can be updated by automated or manual processes to reflect that new location. The location of the PID itself – the record of the object – doesn’t change. Read more of this post

In July, I wrote about Prolifiko’s survey of scholarly writing practice, and our early objectives for that study. We teamed up with two academics and a data insight expert to design a large-scale study into academic writing practice.

So far, the study has gathered responses from 510 academics from over 40 countries and the interim findings build an intriguing picture of how academics write.

The data reveals the highs and lows of the scholarly writing process across a career: when satisfaction (and dissatisfaction) is at its highest, where the blocks come and when external pressure is experienced most acutely.

So far, the role of writing systems seems key.

According to the interim findings, the academics who have developed some kind of ‘system’ to help them write and publish seem far happier and more productive than those who have not. But what is it about having a ‘system’ that helps you get down to work and keep publishing – and how can you develop one of your own? Read more of this post

Dr Bronwyn Eager works as a Lecturer, Entrepreneurship at Swinburne Business School, Swinburne University of Technology. Her research focuses on stress, coping and time-orientation in entrepreneurs and integrating entrepreneurship education into STEM domains.

If academia was a Disney film and I was a street rat (early career researcher) living on the sandy backstreets of Agrabah, who happened to summon a genie, my three top-of-my-head wishes would be: publications, grant money, and a pipeline of non-traditional research outputs.

But after the wishes were granted and I was flying away on my magic carpet, I’d realise my error (besides the fact that I’d forgotten to wish for world peace).

I should have asked for ‘time’ and ‘space’ and ‘someone to cook my meals’ so I could get on with what I actually love: reading, asking questions, collaborating with other academics, discovering answers, writing, editing prose, and disseminating my findings.

Outputs are by-products. If they were instantly granted through genie magic, then the joy of the journey would evaporate quicker than you can say “How’s your research going?”

Yet when you are under pressure to publish (just to keep, let alone advance, your career), have demanding teaching loads, a never-ending cycle of meetings, and deadlines, what you need is time. Time away from distractions. Time that you can dedicate to research. Mostly, that means time for writing.

Which is why, as the kind of person who walks through a weekend craft market thinking “I could make that!”, I decided to start running residential writing retreats.

A friend of mine is applying for a Fellowship and sent through a draft of her application. This article is based on my advice to her. It is written for the Churchill Fellowships in the UK, but it applies to most fellowships around the world.

Winston Churchill as a new Member of Parliament in 1901, via Wikimedia Commons

Fellowship applications are hard. They force you to stand alone. You are often applying early in your career, when you feel like you don’t have much to skite about. The temptation to puff yourself up is overwhelming – then you read back on it and it makes you want to vomit, just a bit.

On the other hand, Fellowships allow you to stand out. This is your moment to shine. Your moment in the spotlight.

I guess it all depends on where you stand.

The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust have been giving out fellowships for over 50 years – they have a very clear idea of who they want to fund. So, I’m going to read their guidelines first, and mine them for advice.

Travel to learn – return to inspire…

We fund UK citizens to travel overseas, exploring new ideas, and return with global insights to inspire communities and professions.

These are the Churchill Fellowships – and they’re open to all.

This is the best thumbnail description of a funding agency that I’ve ever read. These should be your watchwords when you are composing your application. Write for this audience. Read more of this post